Prize-winning quilt

Last month the International Quilt Festival in Houston attracted more than 50,000 quilters from all over the world, including Newman Lake resident Lynda Lynn.

The Festival, billed as the “World’s Fair of Quilts,” featured a professionally judged quilting competition. Lynn’s entry, “Springtime Roosting Robin,” took third-place honors in the innovative appliqué category.

“I didn’t develop the quilt with the idea of showing it,” she said. The 51-inch wall hanging started with a collection of cherrywood fabrics from their French country palette. She loves the suede look of the 100 percent cotton fabric.

The quilt is a medallion piece, meaning Lynn chose the centerpiece design and worked from there outward. “You really don’t know how it will turn out,” she says. “It’s a design-as-you-go thing!”

The result is a symphony of color. Lynn used several machine-quilting techniques to give “Springtime” complexity and depth. Each color flows seamlessly to the next. A brilliant spring green border features trapunto stitching. In Italian, trapunto means, “to embroider.” The technique, also known as “stuffed work,” gives texture and life to the fabric.

Placing in the international competition was just the grand finale to an exciting year for Lynn. The quilt had already won first place in the North Idaho Quilt Show and the Featured Quilter award at the Washington State Quilters Show in Spokane. A few months ago she was thrilled to learn it had been awarded Best Traditional at the Association of Pacific Northwest Quilters juried competition in Seattle.

Lynn started quilting in the late 1990s after she and her mother took an introductory to quilting class at a Coeur d’Alene fabric store. Now, she says, “My most favorite part of the day is taking my coffee into my sewing room in the morning.”

With a background in graphic arts, Lynn is ready to tackle the challenge of creating her own designs.

She loves the tactile work of quilting, the fabrics, piecework and appliqué process. “It’s like comfort food to me,” she says. “It nurtures me.”